pandemik's user reviews

I've had a few weeks now with a Note 4 SM-N910U. Everyone I know who buys a Note, swears by it and is a convert. Now I know why.

There are many reviews out there that do the Note justice but I'd point out a few things about this phone aren't well communicated and may help people considering one.

There is much talk of how good the screen is, it's the best by some reviews (displaymate tested it), but this doesn't explain just how gooder job the software a brilliant job of adapting to light cond...
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I've had a few weeks now with a Note 4 SM-N910U. Everyone I know who buys a Note, swears by it and is a convert. Now I know why.

There are many reviews out there that do the Note justice but I'd point out a few things about this phone aren't well communicated and may help people considering one.

There is much talk of how good the screen is, it's the best by some reviews (displaymate tested it), but this doesn't explain just how gooder job the software a brilliant job of adapting to light conditions, bright outdoor light it adapts to and i'tll go super dim for reading in the dark. It's not just brightness that gets adjusted but contrast, colours, etc. to enhance visibilty. This is actually the first time I've used a phone that has a auto-brightness that is pretty close to perfect that you don't need to mess with the settings to make it brighter or dimmer.
Some reviews test this screen as the best one ever in a smartphone so far, beating out iPhone 6 plus. Yep I agree. It's just perfect all the time.

The camera takes sharp low light photos and video. It really does a stunning job of low light photos, I leave HDR photo mode on all the time. Takes a great photo in all conditions it's up there amongst the best cameras in a smartphone.

Battery life - not much talked about, but this is excellent. It really holds out well under heavy use. It's noticeably better than my previous S4

Stylus - find it makes things possible you couldn't previously do on a smartphone screen. Accuracy means you can tackle navigating desktop web pages on a small screen, including things like mouse hovering for pop up menus.

Samsung's also refined the software all around, it all works very nicely without feeling too full of junk. No complaints there. But you'd still want to replace the stock launcher with Nova launcher and get an alternative keyboard like swiftkey or swype. People who don't do this, I don't not understand them.

It also has a metal frame around the edges, makes it feel sturdy and stiff, feels great in the hand, top end samsungs are all well built but feel plasticy still - this doesn't at all.

Size?
It's the same size as the previous note pretty much, for good reason. It's big, it really couldn't even be a tiny bit bigger But it still does fit in my pocket, it's still managable but it's right on the limit of how big a "phone" can be. I couldn't honestly go back to something smaller though.

This phone is cheaper than the iPhone 6 plus, and beats it in a number of categories, also Note has a stylus, makes better use of the bigger screen + stylus out of the box without relying on developers to find a use for it, expandable storage and doesn't need proprietary adapters. This is the #1 big phone ... for now.

The SM-N910U is the best choice, as has the eight core Exynos CPU, it really puts down the performance numbers, this is a very future proof phone.

A pretty good SSD for the money. Performing well so far. I've previously had issues with stabillity and stuttering with Sandforce based SSDs from OCZ, the Indilinx controller in this seems rock solid. It improved a little with a firmware update to the latest version, there were minor performance issues with the one it came with - but nothing you'd actually notice in practice, but it's worth staying up to date on firmware.
Unlike sandforce it doesn't use compression tricks to boost performance, ...
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A pretty good SSD for the money. Performing well so far. I've previously had issues with stabillity and stuttering with Sandforce based SSDs from OCZ, the Indilinx controller in this seems rock solid. It improved a little with a firmware update to the latest version, there were minor performance issues with the one it came with - but nothing you'd actually notice in practice, but it's worth staying up to date on firmware.
Unlike sandforce it doesn't use compression tricks to boost performance, so it's possible to use NTFS compression and save space on some file types. NTFS compression boosts performance a little with this type of controller as modern CPUs are so fast it's almost no overhead.

It benchmarks a little higher than my old OCZ Vertex 2 E 60gb, which was quite quick, in practice it's speeded up my PC, about 12 seconds to boot, instead of about 15.
Game load times are really quick at the momment.
If you can get a good low price this is a really good SSD from OCZ. Searching web seems to be few complaints compared to Sandforce based Agility drives.

Great little tablet. Asus and google have done a great job for the price. Even at the inflated price this is on market in NZ ($439 I paid) it packs a lot in for the money. Hardware good design and is a sharp piece of engineering. The IPS screens good and hi-res very crisp text and clear photos/video (colours in brighter areas are not so vivid, software calibration could use some work it seems), very nice to hold with textured back. Light, it's about half the weight of an ipad and can be comfort...
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Great little tablet. Asus and google have done a great job for the price. Even at the inflated price this is on market in NZ ($439 I paid) it packs a lot in for the money. Hardware good design and is a sharp piece of engineering. The IPS screens good and hi-res very crisp text and clear photos/video (colours in brighter areas are not so vivid, software calibration could use some work it seems), very nice to hold with textured back. Light, it's about half the weight of an ipad and can be comfortably held for long time like a reader. It's proving to be a really good reader, websites, news, ebooks. in portrait mode you can type on the on screen keyboard with thumbs quite comfortably. Also suprise killer app: Gaming is outstanding in landscape mode - Tegra 3 packs some punch in graphics performance - light weight makes using tilt controls really sweet. Speaker in rear is clear - has dual drivers hidden in there. Sound quality through headphones and plugged in to a big home theatre set up was great - right up there with the best i've heard out of mobile devices. The OS is EXCELLENT, it's a pure Android experience free from crapware, it's really slick and smooth and Android 4.0 was already good but 4.1 is a good refinement with some powerful stuff - Chrome browser gives very close to a full desktop experience in your hand. Google Now is also very cool, predictive search results and handles kiwi accent pretty well considering. Best voice control I've ever encountered. All the settings are so easily accessible and the great Android notificaition system is even better than ever. Multitasking is also slick and effective. These are areas Android is ahead of iOS.

How does this compare to iPad? It doesn't. This is it's own category of gadget. So much more portable, it's half the price and half the weight it's not even fair to compare the two. That's like comparing a tiny netbook to a full laptop. Also Android is so cool also does more, and faster, with tons of personalisation options that iOS feels restricted and burdened with eye candy that you can't turn off. Google Now is also an impressive service and it's only early days yet. Finally, when I got this gadget I logged in with my Google account and BOOM just like that all my paid apps i'd bought on my smartphone were available on my tablet, along with all my contacts and wifi-passwords. I didn't have to buy a single one twice! Well done Google!

Pros:
Screen is sharp
Ergonomics and portablitiy is spot on
PerformanceCPU is fast as GPU kicks ass
Battery life is outstanding 10+ hours of abuse easily. Charge every 2-3 days for me.
standard common Mini-b usb connector with OTG support
Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" just rocks
Google Play store has so everything you might ever need

Cons:
Some google services (music, books) not available in NZ!
Very few accesories available yet (Should be plenty eventually but man it's taking a while)
No microSD card slot
no HDMI output.
Colours on screen are flat and muted at high brightness levels
USB host mode only works with a OTG adapter which is hard to find then software support is limited. USB keyboard and mouse did work for me though.
Need to install some apps like Nova launcher to get more functionality.
Tablets have a long way to go yet, still a tad gimmicky

Who should buy it: Anyone needs very capable but very portable computing. Nice middle spot between a smartphone and a laptop.
Good performance for money, maybe consider this instead of a netbook? If an iPad is kind of big and pricey for you this might be your thing too. Women: It's handbag size.

Wow great gadget. Early review: only had this a couple of weeks and got it $439 from Noel Leeming, they had some early stock so got it on the spot. Well engineered by Asus, it's half the price and weight of an iPad, it's a whole different kind of portable, but it packs in a lot of punch. Good screen, good speakers - actually dual drivers. Smooth fast interface, instant loading apps. Video, 3d Graphics are great the CPU+GPU in this is damn sweet for the price. Same GPU in asus transformer prime!...
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Wow great gadget. Early review: only had this a couple of weeks and got it $439 from Noel Leeming, they had some early stock so got it on the spot. Well engineered by Asus, it's half the price and weight of an iPad, it's a whole different kind of portable, but it packs in a lot of punch. Good screen, good speakers - actually dual drivers. Smooth fast interface, instant loading apps. Video, 3d Graphics are great the CPU+GPU in this is damn sweet for the price. Same GPU in asus transformer prime! Battery life good, 10+ hours mixed usage wifi and gps turned on. it's nice to hold in portrait for reading news, websites, ebooks, good general reader. You can type with both hands and thumbs comfortably for extended periods. Next-word prediction in keyboard is great! Swype/Swiftkey can be downloaded - great on a tablet. Held in landscape it is quite good for gaming - can get thumbs on screen to control it. Includes Google Now voice recognition & predictive results cards. Google has done this REALLY well, and results are excellent. Voice recognition doesn't quite handle kiwi accent properly yet (if you put on an american or british accent/drawl, results improve haha). Happy with this, price should come down as more availablity pops up. Easy to recommend this for a portable tablet, with a quad-core cpu, poweful GPU (comparable to the iPad 3, real world gaming performance is within 20% difference perhaps), plus the new Android 4.1, it all adds up to excellent for the money - IF you can get one at a good price. The BAD things: Some things aren't available in NZ like the Books service, Wallet, or the $25USD money to spend in play store. There is no SD card slot, no removable battery, NO HDMI output. Screen colours are not so crisp on brighter areas of image, generally a natural image but bright colours don't pop. Photos look good but otherwise it's a bit soft. may be fixed with software update. Android 4.1 is quite a huge leap ahead of 4.0 which was already damn good, the pace of android development is fast, it's the horse to bet on at the moment.

Good sounding speakers for the money, subwoofer makes good bass clear enough. Speakers can sound a little tinny in mid range, but it's hard to find this quality in a low to mid price set up. Pushing the volume quality holds up well. Doesn't have any built in up-mixing capability, you need a proper 5.1 source. I find these kind of mid price speakers too easily get interference from cellphones nearby. Same deal here, my cellphone has to be a metre away or more before it stops making interference....
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Good sounding speakers for the money, subwoofer makes good bass clear enough. Speakers can sound a little tinny in mid range, but it's hard to find this quality in a low to mid price set up. Pushing the volume quality holds up well. Doesn't have any built in up-mixing capability, you need a proper 5.1 source. I find these kind of mid price speakers too easily get interference from cellphones nearby. Same deal here, my cellphone has to be a metre away or more before it stops making interference. Only high end stuff seems to be properly shielded (even then not all the time). So this was a good addition to my gaming PC when my 5 year old creative 6.1 system finally failed, this sounds a lot better.

Holy moly what a phone! Thought I would update my review after having this phone for three months. Best Phone Purchase Ever. Boat loads of fun and it hasn't let me down.

Oh and Siri-like is already built in to your S2, Apple's making out like it's something new. There's Vlingo app available for any Android device, but that's kind of redundant since voice control's built into Android anyway! (Admit I feel like a fool talking to my phone so don't use it)

Holy moly what a phone! Thought I would update my review after having this phone for three months. Best Phone Purchase Ever. Boat loads of fun and it hasn't let me down.

Oh and Siri-like is already built in to your S2, Apple's making out like it's something new. There's Vlingo app available for any Android device, but that's kind of redundant since voice control's built into Android anyway! (Admit I feel like a fool talking to my phone so don't use it)

The screen is stunning, colours really pop (there's adjustable screen modes for colour rendering, depending on your preference), contrast is excellent. You have to see it to believe it. Super AMOLED Plus is very easy on the eye for someone with bad eyes like me, it's nicely readable in all lighting conditions.
The phones performance of the phone is off the hook, it's fast at everything, gaming is super slick, video playback is outstanding. Really don't need to go into detail there, it's ridiculously quick.
The phone has a fast boot up from power off (beats iPhone), loads web pages snappy fast, does Adobe Flash beautifully, it will do full 1080p video recording and playback. With a good browser like Firefox or Opera Mobile it'll handle ANY web page smoothly.
I've reccently got an HDMI adapter for this phone - amazing output to HDTV - played 1080p video and Angry Birds on 42" screen.
The camera is an 8 megapixel beast. It's approaching the quality of a proper compact camera. I reccently took 90% of my photos on holiday in australia with this phone, except where I needed optical zoom or macro I used my regular 7mp camera. The digital zoom is crappy, but it always is.
Front is excellent toughened fingerprint-resistant gorilla glass, don't need a screen protector unless paranoid, you'll have a hard time scratching the glass!

The phone is impossibly slim and light, Samsung has sacrificed a lot to make this thing light, such that it isn't quite a premium feeling as a metal shell - but it's still good. Shell offers some edge protection if you drop it - this is a lot less fragile than an iPhone.

Battery life is very good for a smartphone, but be warned gaming, wifi, gps, mobile hotspot etc will burn the battery FAST and you'll be charging every day in some cases twice a day (something very familiar to smartphone owners), BUT on standby the phone does quite well for a high end phone, probably better than 90% of smarphones? Tweak some settings it will last well. Point is though, don't be suprised if you burn that battery down in 7 hours! At best I can go two days on a charge with moderate use, that's no show stopper.

The stock TouchWiz interface is slick enough, but some don't like it and it's but it's not best Android has to offer. I got rid of it - one of the alternative homescreen launchers you can get from the market may improve the usage for some people. ADW Launcher and others are good choices for this phone. It allows you to fit more on screen if you tweak settings.

Samsung has also included a "Samsung Apps" which lets you get some freebies you'd otherwise have to pay for, some cool 3D games customized especially for the hardware. But otherwise isn't much use - interface is a bit basic.

I've noticed the battery burns down scary fast when you are really pushing the phone, touchwiz isn't so good, you'll want to switch to alternative, the call quality is very average, perhaps a little muffled, this is a premium phone it should be crisp and clear.

There are no show stoppers though, only a few niggles. Very happy with this phone and find the extra screen real estate means I can use the phone for things I never previously did on a smartphone. Can browse full websites instead of mobile version.

MHL-type HDMI ouput is a killer app for me. Did mean buying an extra accesory.

If you are upgrading from a dumbphone, this is the smartphone to buy. If you have a smarpthone like the iPhone 4, this is a worthy alternative option to the iPhone 4S - especially if you can save hundreds of dollars buying this. This is firmly in the category of superphone.

This is the very best smart phone you can buy right now for a lot of reasons and even now the 4S is out and that is slightly more powerful, this is still well ahead of anything Apple has. Glad I didn't buy an iPhone but sorry I wasted time considering anything form Apple at the moment. The progress of Android is phenomenally outpacing anything else, and with this kind of phone hardware you can't go wrong. For now, this is the #1 phone to buy, untill Samsung brings out the SIII

I bought one of these for my wifey, got a great deal ($580) and it's suprisingly good! She's very impressed with it. Arc S has same shell but is upgraded over the older Arc. Good hardware design, it's good looking, slim and light, has a curved back that feels very nice in the hand. It's actually comparable is size and slimness to my Samsung Galaxy SII (the king of phones at the momment),
8-megapix camera takes some sharp as shots and they look good on the 4.2" screen. Does well in low light an...
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I bought one of these for my wifey, got a great deal ($580) and it's suprisingly good! She's very impressed with it. Arc S has same shell but is upgraded over the older Arc. Good hardware design, it's good looking, slim and light, has a curved back that feels very nice in the hand. It's actually comparable is size and slimness to my Samsung Galaxy SII (the king of phones at the momment),
8-megapix camera takes some sharp as shots and they look good on the 4.2" screen. Does well in low light and has good features. Has very natural clean colour on screen, video and games also look great.
Has a panorama camera feature and will generate 3D panoramas that can be output to a 3DTV.

Interface has some spiffy customizations from sony, wife likes them, but if this was mine id' be replacing it with a homescreen replacement from the android market.

Clear call quality for this kind of phone, very good signal strength.

It's not as super duper fast as the top phones, but it's actually close, it's responsive and games, and it's a helluva lot cheaper. Turned out to be a great value buy.

1080p video recording, play back and HDMI 1080p output to our big TV! Video quality is great. Will also output 3D HDTV for the panorama photo thing it does.

Plugged sound into a big home theatre rig and, FINALLY a phone with REALLY good sound. It's better than my SGSII

Battery life is good for a smartphone, she was warned that smartphones have nothing like battery life of old school dumb phones, but she actually find she's getting several days with typical use.

The good:
Excellent screen.
Tons of features to play with.
Great looking design, hand-friendly to hold.
Seems durable and not fragile like some phones.
Good camera.
Good speed and responsiveness.
Easy to theme and personalise sony's interface without mucking about.
Built-in music store from sony with a lot of tracks.
Hundreds of dollars cheaper than the current crop of super phones because it doesn't have legions of die-hard fans paying any price for it.

The bad:
Not dual core, can't complain much at this price though.
No front facing camera (hmm ... then again who ever uses them?)
Front buttons are a little close to the bottom edge of screen, but are raised so have a nice positive feel, but they can get knocked.
Still needs a protective case, another beautiful exterior design that's going to spend it's life in a ugly protective case.

Happy with the quality of this for the money, was nicely surprised. Buy the Arc S not the Arc (unless you get it really really cheap).

Wireless performance was slower than expected. Even with careful set up, good signal and low interference perfromance wasn't great. Internet is fast enough, but internal LAN transfers on this router are not so hot. ethernet internal switching is slow on this router. Transferring between two computers connected to wifi gets a feeble 2.5mb/s at best, averaging 1.5mb/s, which is unusable for me. This router supports DD-WRT which is a plus. I got this router cheap, it does the job, but I will most ...
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Wireless performance was slower than expected. Even with careful set up, good signal and low interference perfromance wasn't great. Internet is fast enough, but internal LAN transfers on this router are not so hot. ethernet internal switching is slow on this router. Transferring between two computers connected to wifi gets a feeble 2.5mb/s at best, averaging 1.5mb/s, which is unusable for me. This router supports DD-WRT which is a plus. I got this router cheap, it does the job, but I will most definatley be looking for an upgrade and spending a bit more.

I've had one of these phones for two years. Well constructed, good battery life, call quality. Has lasted well but very out of date in terms of technology, slow and too little ram to run newer apps. I removed my previous positive review and put something more relevant now this phone is old and still on the market for some reason. Newer phones at this price point are somewhat better in terms of performance.

A few times I've wandered into the store they've been quite helpful, even followed up an inquiry with a call some days later, which I wasn't expecting. Good to deal with in person as a retail store (compared to others in wellington), seem to pay not much attention to listing online.

I rate this 10/10 without hesitiation. I don't do that lightly. I can't find a single reason to mark it down. An impressive bit of kit. For the size, price, the performance is epic. My single best purchase ever - the performance transformation to my rig was awesome. The Sandforce 1200 is excellent, it never stutters or lags. In my benchmarking it really does meet the specs OCZ says, it's not marketting spin. My results looked much like the benchmarks on the website.
This SSD is not the cheapest...
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I rate this 10/10 without hesitiation. I don't do that lightly. I can't find a single reason to mark it down. An impressive bit of kit. For the size, price, the performance is epic. My single best purchase ever - the performance transformation to my rig was awesome. The Sandforce 1200 is excellent, it never stutters or lags. In my benchmarking it really does meet the specs OCZ says, it's not marketting spin. My results looked much like the benchmarks on the website.
This SSD is not the cheapest of this bracket, there are a few cheaper, but it's reasonably priced in a cost/GB ratio, has features like TRIM etc. The real win is the 60GB drive doesn't loose performance over the 100+GB sizes - the benchmarks look the same. This makes this the fastest 64GB drive there is - if it's top of the podium then it's almost a 10/10. But in some circumstances this drive is twice as fast as other drives at the same price. This is like getting Ferrari V12 performance in your Honda V6. The product was already deserving a high rating, thats enough for a perfect score.

I was also looking at the crucial C300 64gb, another very good ssd, which may have higher quote peak read speed, but the write speed penalty was too high. The Vertex 2 seems to sustain good read/write under tough conditions, where the C300 have not. This also fares better in benchmarks.

I set up my Vertex 2 as my OS boot drive, Windows 7 starts incredibly fast - about 10 seconds from the boot menu to login. Out of interest Ubuntu 10.10 with bootchart reported 7.4 seconds for the OS start time itself. I've heard guys saying once you SSD you never go back. Yeah I don't know myself now I've got one of these. System is whole lot more responsive than the fastish SATA 1TB drives I was using previously. I now have my OS on the SSD and data on the SATA drives, which are now faster too, since they no longer have to support the OS as well as files. Moving stuff back and forth of the SSD is so FAST it doesn't matter that 60gb isn't much room. It's easy enough to install software I don't use often to a larger HDD drive.
I purchased for $270 delivered from one of the top stores. Came with a bracket, screws, sticker, attractive packaging.
This is my first SSD and I have to say I'm a convert. Its worth the 2.5x price over a decent hard disk - the performance difference is like night and day.
Again, can't fault it, much more than I expected for the price.

Too loud!! Very noisey compared to most, fan blows alot of air through. You can see through the grill the heatsinks look a bit cheap, so no wonder they needed to boost fan speed. So someone may find use for this if they don't care about noise. to ventilate a case that is hot but has little extra space for fans?

4 years ago

Unknown

Very good cooler. Performs like a 120mm tower cooler, but is lower height (less than 150mm clearance needed). Tower coolers wouldn't fit in my case.
Very quiet. At full fan speed still is quite normal normal, but very effective cooling at max.
Construction quality of this is good, the CPU contact area has a perfectly flat mirror finish!
Temps with overclocked 3.8ghz dual core stayed under 50c

4 years ago

Unknown

Bought one for my parents PC, very quiet running! Stable and reliable so far over 6 months. Seems to be a good quality PSU for the money.

Excellent all around but with a few niggles that weren't really apparent from reading about it. I love the look, the build quality ... it's unfortunate this has a few problems and compromises otherwise it would be perfect for me. Fantastic sleek looking without being overdone, has some cheap (but nice looking) plastic on the front. The black painted interior is sexy, and tinted window panel makes it still look good but still able to show of your computing horsepower 'under the hood'. Has some g...
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Excellent all around but with a few niggles that weren't really apparent from reading about it. I love the look, the build quality ... it's unfortunate this has a few problems and compromises otherwise it would be perfect for me. Fantastic sleek looking without being overdone, has some cheap (but nice looking) plastic on the front. The black painted interior is sexy, and tinted window panel makes it still look good but still able to show of your computing horsepower 'under the hood'. Has some good and bad points though. It is a compact case over all, so there is not a lot of spare room around components, so installation is very tight. There is cable management holes with rubber gromets, but there is not a lot of room too work with these. It is very tidy professional looking when finished installing, but this is at the expense of easy of working. Tooless install is ok. This is a cheap price for a very high-end look, but it is steel + plastic rather than aluminum, so not light. Only comes with four out of five possible fans, and the missing one is a 140mm slot, a 120mm will fit but looks not right. This is annoying. Not so easy to find a matching fan (Can't find official fan for sale, but the Artic Cooling F12 white is similar). Not really needed, airflow is fine with two graphics cards. Big cooler towers will not fit! 120mm have a few prblems. 90mm towers are fine. Best to orient fan-blowing-up. Likely not to fit the other way. This turned out to not be a bad thing because of the large fans in the ceiling! Nice all round but loses a few stars for the few problem points.